Author responds to 'Wyatt Earp' review

Wyatt Earp, who as a law officer participated in a famous gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, has been portrayed in numerous films, most of which depict him as a man who rightfully dispensed violent justice in a lawless West. That Hollywood view of Earp persists, notably in a 1998 biography by Allen Barra, who believed that Hollywood got the most important thing about Earp's life right. Barra wrote that "the movies, however much they oversimplified the story, didn't lose sight of who the good guys and bad guys were."

On July 5, the Tribune published Barra's review of my new book, "Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life," which challenges Hollywood's version of Earp's life. Unsurprisingly, given his views, Barra wrote a hostile review.

I argue that Earp was not simply a lawman but also a gambler and a con man with an arrest record that spanned 40 years. He sold rocks painted yellow as gold bricks to unsuspecting buyers. He was involved in fixing a heavyweight championship prizefight in 1896. As late as 1911, at age 63, he was arrested by the Los Angeles Police bunco squad for running a crooked card game. More importantly, he was the original and most important teller of tall tales about his own life. Earp spent the last two decades of his life (he died in 1929) near Hollywood, where he befriended early silent film Western actors and directors, presenting himself to them as a lawman who had always been on the side of justice. He did this in large part to try to repair his negative public image as a gambler and vigilante. He implored one of his Hollywood friends, William S. Hart, to play him on screen. In the hope that a memoir of his life might be turned into a film script, Earp spent the last decade of his life sharing practiced and selective reminiscences — carefully editing out his mistakes and inflating his accomplishments — with a series of would-be biographers. That we remember Earp as a lawman rather than a con man was his most successful and enduring confidence game.

"Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life" documents how many of the stories about Earp depicted in Hollywood films came originally from Earp himself. In the early 1870s, Earp covered up his arrests in Indian Territory and Illinois (for horse theft and consorting with prostitutes) by claiming that he was hunting bison. When he reminisced to potential biographers, Earp claimed that he had stared down a lynch mob in Tombstone in January, 1881 (in fact, it was the town marshal who did this). Perhaps most importantly, Earp claimed that in the 1881 Tombstone gunfight and as a vigilante in 1882 he never drew his gun on a man first. I found in my research that one can track these stories to Earp; he was spinning these tales long before Hollywood made the first Earp film.

There are numerous inaccuracies about "Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life" in Barra's review; with only limited space, I'll correct just one of them: I do not argue that Earp and his friend Doc Holliday had, as Barra put it, "some kind of homosexual relationship." Rather, I argue that in the 1870s and 1880s Earp lived in a world of men; the gender ratios in the cow towns and mining camps he inhabited were skewed in favor of men. He fought with some of these men (notably in Tombstone), and also found his closest friendships with them — in fact, he shared a bed with his partner on the police force in Wichita in 1875-76. This does not mean that they had a sexual relationship. As I wrote, "For male friends to room together and even to share the same bed was not unusual in nineteenth-century America." I also write that Bat Masterson, who knew both Earp and Holliday, referred to them as "Damon and Pythias." A century ago, this was a euphemism for two people of the same gender who were emotionally close friends. Today, such a couple would be presumed to be partners in every sense. It didn't mean that a century ago, but Barra seems unable to recognize that distinction.

If you want the Earp myth, dust off your DVD of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral or Tombstone. If you prefer to get your history from historians rather than Hollywood, you'll appreciate "Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life."

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